US President Joe Biden will welcome the President of the European Council, Charles Michel, and the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, to Washington on Friday 20 October for an EU-US summit. The end of negotiations on the agreement on critical minerals could be announced on this occasion - discussions have been taking place regularly for several weeks.
There is greater doubt about the Global Arrangement on Sustainable Steel and Aluminium (GSA), which is due to be concluded before the end of October (see EUROPE 12824/4). Otherwise, the suspension of mutual tariffs on steel and aluminium will come to an end. The European Commissioner for Trade, Valdis Dombrovskis, and the US Trade Representative, Katherine Tai, have been negotiating a global agreement for the past 2 years to deal with overcapacity in steel and aluminium, as well as ‘greening’ production worldwide.
However, their position remains far apart with a month to go, and we are expecting an intermediate solution such as extending the suspension of the respective tariffs (see EUROPE 13235/10). (Original version in French by Léa Marchal)